


Patient Discharge

by whathopsareinthis



Series: Comfortable Silence [5]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: I hope I'm not too rusty, It's been a while, M/M, This is a bummer y'all, oof
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:01:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24958045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whathopsareinthis/pseuds/whathopsareinthis
Summary: Ganon, against every impulse and judgment in his fiber, lets the call take him to voicemail.
Relationships: Ganondorf/Link (Legend of Zelda)
Series: Comfortable Silence [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1098723
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	Patient Discharge

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the delay. I had no laptop for several months, and I'm currently in between jobs. I wanted to make sure everything about this last part was done carefully. I hope you enjoy the ending. I may try a different fandom/pairing for my next work. Thank you for your kind words and kudos. 
> 
> -WHAITs

Link smiles to himself as he plays again, within his own mind, his version of what Ganon sounds like. 

Watching his paramour field calls, chatting with coworkers and Nabooru; it’s incredibly foreign to him. However, the foil of Ganon taking charge, in a suit, helps reignite this little hobby of his. He imagines a firm baritone that carries through the whole office, the kind of authority that wasn’t running the show, but was well aware he could. He files this in with his more intimate understanding, a rumbling murmur that scratches like the stubble on Link’s neck when he kisses there… or his taint when he sits on Ganon’s face. 

He fiddles with a lock of his straw golden hair, a smile permeating up his dimples like a secret. It was a secret, wasn’t it? Their involvement. It’s not as if Link has anyone to blab it to. Still, it’s his.Theirs. 

_Vrrt! Vrrt!_

His blush is enhanced as he’s surprised by his phone. Ganon?

His secret tucks behind his ear with that lock of hair he’s played with now for several minutes. He unlocks his phone.

**You ready? The meeting is about to start.**

Link doesn’t even finish reading the text as he hops up, a kettle of eustress and heart-on-sleeve demeanor about to boil over.

He soon realizes that Ganondorf doesn’t follow him into the conference room and his kettle verges on a shrieking whistle.

-

The room is hushed. The rustling of Sheik signing the details of their presentation is only matched by Link’s own hand wringing and shirt tugging. The technology of the surgery goes over Link’s head. Sensorineural hearing loss reversal. It’s like magic, the size of the transplant and what it’s capable of doing. To expand the mid-range pitches that he could hear. And all adjustable from his phone with an app. Sheikah ingenuity was something he read about on tech blogs and press conferences. It’s never been done before. Sheik prompts the next slide, and gestures towards Link as the slide tells:

’We want you to be the first patient. We want to give you your hearing back.’ 

It’s a moment before a sharp exhale out his nose to signal his affirmation. Then another. A quicker heap of breath follows. His gaze shifts to Nabooru, then Sheik. He brings a thumb to his chin, pointing finger curving at the midpoint.

_Who?_

Sheik and Nabooru share a glance as he is translated, and there’s a moment of pause before they both gesture to Ganon. He’s hunched over his desk, on a separate phone call. He briefly acknowledges the meeting and quickly avoids their glances. Link sinks into the seat a bit as the weight of what’s being implied sets in, and it causes his heart to drop into his gut. 

Then his ears grow hot.

It takes Link about fifteen seconds to realize his body has taken him out of the room, adrenaline and long-dormant anger carrying him to Ganon’s workstation. His finger immediately depresses the hangup button as the larger man barely manages to finish his pleasantry.

Ganon is taken aback by the interruption, but his eyes widen as Link does something for the first time since that night he was stood up a month ago. 

Link starts to sign.

“I cannot fucking believe you.” Sheik is quick to interpret for Link, the office’s eerie silence broken up with frantic, vitriolic gasps and sobs. “I am not your project. I am not something to be fixed. I never should have trusted you.” Link’s outburst blinds him - not from the fluorescent lights slamming the brightness meter, but by making the man who he debatably could have loved look ugly. It doesn’t occur to him to decide which Ganon. “I thought I saw someone underneath that washed up lush. I was wrong. You’re a selfish drunk asshole. I wish I could be the person I was before I met you.” Link balls his fists as he storms back to the meeting room, a secretary following after and shooting the others a scared glance. 

Nabooru collapses into Ganon’s seat, slender fingers pressing into her temple. With a voice that Ganon isn’t able to decipher, she offers, “I think you should take the rest of the day off.” His eyes hit the floor.

\----------

Link is still drowsy from coming out as Zee goes through the final paperwork to have him released to her. The buzz of the room around him - shoes hitting the floor, pens flourishing with a signature, PA drawls paging doctors - it doesn’t register to him that it’s not in his head. He leans his head back in the wheelchair and falls back asleep. 

He dreams of being a child, hearing the story of the Triforce for the hundredth time. The sharpest image, clearly, is the voice - somehow familiar, yer unfamiliar. Crisp. Gently nestle along his ear.

The dream ends before he realizes it.

\-----

Link is in his bed, drowsily leaning his head over towards the only light source in the room. Zee is in a chair, the light of her phone allowing her to read from a book. 

“....the Three Goddesses descended from the chaos above to bear their gifts upon the horizon, and create the world anew. The first goddess, Din, created the material world. The second goddess, Naryu, spread law and order throughout the realm. Farore, the final Goddess, created all life for us to live in…”

She stops, jumping as she looks up. Link’s throat makes a noise, his mouth slowly letting the loudest noise she’s ever heard him make. Could he? Did it work?  
Zee feels herself crumble as the book falls from her grip. 

\---------

“He doesn’t wanna see you.” Impa shrugs as a slow night at Tatl and Tael comes to a whimper of an end. Her tone is the same as Nabooru’s was. As Zee was when Ganon found out that Link agreed to the surgery. As Sheik was when Ganon found out that the big client was thoroughly pleased with the progress of the project. Three days later, and everyone has that same tone. Everyone sounds exasperated.

At a loss.

Disappointed. 

A victory that everyone gets something out of, but no one really wants.

“That’s his choice. That’s - I get it.” Ganon knocks back the shot, rapping twice on the bartop. Impa replenishes the bourbon, forgoing his normal neat for shooting from the hip. “I just -”

“Look, Gan.” She’s annoyed now, and Ganon frowns as her voice dips. “If you fucking loved him - even cared about him _remotely_ \- then you should have known that your job wasn’t nearly as important as his fucking happiness.” 

“I wanted to-”

“You could have done anything else! I dunno, tell him you love him?! Because he sure as fuck was about to tell you the same goddamned thing. And you absolutely shit on that. For your job.” She turns away, slamming her rag on the bar. 

“Last fucking call.” 

She isn’t able to bring herself to look back at him as she quietly apologizes to the couple gawking at her thanks to her roasting the shit out of a regular. The next time Impa turns around, Ganon’s seat is empty.

There’s a twenty next to his shot glass - it’s full. 

Impa purses her lips. She fully knows she didn’t have to be that hard on him - a small bit of her even regrets it. 

She takes the shot glass, eyeing it thoughtfully before raising it for a toast.

“To Ganon. You big dumb fuckup of a man. You never deserved Link, but…” She loses confidence for a moment and gives up. “But you came close. Closer than anyone would have tried.” The raincloud Ganon has left behind has now taken up residence over Impa. “Hope you don’t let the next one go.” She sulks, and knocks back the liquor with a rough exhale following. “Maybe you’ll stop drinking shitty bourbon, too.”

\------

_Fuck it._

_Fuck it._

_I’m doing it._

_I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m a fucking loser._

Ganon, against every impulse and judgment in his fiber, lets the call take him to voicemail and begins his apology. His head thunks gently as it hits the button of the door to an apartment, his splayed body hunched against it. 

“When you’re finished recording, you may hang up or press ‘one’ for more options.”

Beep.

-

Link is supposed to feel happier about today, one he’s dreamed about for about as long as he’s been hard of hearing. He’s had his moments of pure joy when Zee and Impa saw him for the first time in days and laughed through their tears as he said their names for the first time. The implant had been nothing but Cloud 9-level success for his hearing, albeit with some adjusting to attune noise levels. He jumps as his full-vibrated phone makes a tone that suggests there’s a voicemail. It startles him, and he remembers it’s from Ganon and stuffs it under a pillow, cradling it to his prone form and grunting. 

_Fuck you. You ruined the happiest day of my life._ He doesn’t even care if he speaks out loud, the words dripping with tangible resentment. The phone, muffled, emits the tone again, its happy trill driving him up a wall. Just get it over with. He unplugs his phone, striding to his computer chair.

He looks away, finger dragging over the ‘play’ button under his voicemails, and starts playback. 

“ **Link, uh. It’s Gan** _.”_ Link immediately softens, taken aback by how… vulnerable. How irrevocably _gentle_ the man sounds. It immediately sets in, a sweeping realization that slowly eats away at his composure.

It’s exactly as he thought it would be.

“ **I know I’m probably the last person you want to hear, for the first time at least. But I wanted to explain myself, on my own terms, before you cut me completely out.** _”_ There’s a sigh, Ganon pausing to choose his next words with more care than he probably has ever exhibited in Link’s eyes. Those eyes water.

“ **I referred you for the implant process for my client, not because I didn’t want to put in effort into being with you, or because being deaf was a burden and holding me back. Not because I wanted to nail the project** _.”_ Ganon breathes in through his nose, calming himself audibly. “ _**I did it because… I wanted to give you a choice. One you never were given, one that was stolen from you all those years ago.** _ _”_

Link’s teeth grit as his ducts overflow, his cheeks hot.

“ **I did it because you gave me a choice I couldn’t make for myself. You texted me that night and forced me to choose - go down the path I had laid out for myself, or take the high road and change from the ground up in order to be a man you could stand to be around.”** There’s a sniffle. **“I know it doesn’t seem like a lot, but I did it all because… fuck, Link. I love you.** _”_

Link’s mouth is covered with a clutching hand.

 **“I’ve fought for myself, for us, these past few months just to be able to say that and mean it. I only know I failed because I know it’s coming too little, too late.”** Sniffle, cough. **“** **And I’ll carry that weight, little Link. As long as I live. Knowing that I loved you and it amounted to nothing. That I let that happen.”**

Beat. 

**“Anyway, you’re probably already burning this bridge, so I won’t take up much more of your time. But the seat next to me will always be taken. If you find it within yourself to forgive me, whether now or a lifetime from now...I hope to see you again. It’ll always be yours.”**

Link drops the phone. 

**“Thank you, Link. I’m sorry.”**

The voicemail ends. 

Link hears his own choked sobs for the first time and, for a brief moment, wishes to hear nothing else ever again. 

-

The End


End file.
